1. Password protect the access to your router’s internal configuration
To access your router’s internal setup, open a browser and enter the routers setup URL. The URL will be specified in the manual. The URLs for D-Link and Linksys routers, two major manufacturers of wireless routers, are
http://192.168.0.1 and
http://192.168.1.1, respectively.
For Linksys routers, leave the user name blank and type “admin” (without the quotes) in the password field and press enter. To change the password, simply click on the Password tab and enter your new password.
For other routers, please consult your manual. Alternately, you can search on the Internet with the term “default login for ”. Don’t be surprised to find quite a number of pages listing default login parameters for many different routers, even uncommon ones.
2. Change the default SSID (Service Set IDentifier)
The SSID is the name of a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network). All wireless devices on a WLAN use SSIDs to communicate with each other.
Routers ship with standard default SSIDs. For example, the default SSID for Linksys routers is, not unsurprisingly, “Linksys”. As you can see, if you don’t change the default SSID of your router a would-be intruder armed with a few common SSIDs from major manufacturers will be able to find your wireless network quite easily.
To change the SSID, click on the Wireless tab. Look for an input item labeled SSID. It will be near the top. Enter a new name for network. Don’t use something like “My Network”. Use a name that is be hard to guess.
3. Disable SSID broadcast
Wireless enabled computers use network discovery software to automatically search for nearby SSIDs. Some of the more advanced software will query the SSIDs of nearby networks and even display their names. Therefore, changing the network name only helps partially to secure your network. To prevent your network name from being discovered, you must disable SSID broadcast.
Make sure the laptop users know how to change settings though. They don't want to be using the same settings at work and at home. Honestly, mine at home (and the one at work for that matter) has manually assigned IPs and only certain MAC addresses are allowed to see it.
